Google Wants Its Watches Everywhere Before Apple Is Anywhere

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

It happened with the PC: Apple built one first, but Microsoft operating systems became the dominant way people computed. It happened with the smartphone: Apple’s iPhone defined the category, but around the world far more phones run Google’s Android.

On Wednesday, Google launched a new Android platform for watches that it hopes will change history by skipping the part where Apple gets there first. As Apple apparently worries over every exquisite detail of its entry into the smartwatch market, Android Wear represents Google’s hope of commodifying the concept before its rival can make the idea of a wrist computer seem special. Android became more commonplace than iOS on phones because Google allowed other handset makers to use it, the same way Windows became ubiquitous while the Mac OS did not. The difference with watches is Android Wear doesn’t have to live up to a standard set by Apple.

Google wants to corner the market on wrist-managed travel, among other use cases, before Apple does. Image: GoogleIn theory, this absence of competition should work to Google’s advantage. But the tenets of capitalism teach that competition is good because it pushes competitors to innovate. Android Wear as shown off at the Google I/O keynote Wednesday did not appear to offer any dramatic innovations that might spur otherwise indifferent consumers to embrace smartwatches. Google says the 125 times we supposedly glance at our phones each day highlight the need for devices with better “glancability.” But the possibility of checking text messages or playing music or ordering a pizza with a watch rather than a phone hasn’t yet proven compelling enough to convince most people to opt for a wrist interface alongside a phone that’s glance-able enough. (This “not different enough” point was driven home all too well by the LG and Samsung Android Wear “watches” that went on sale yesterday. They look like phones strapped to your wrist.)

Still, as Google has shown with Android on phones (and Microsoft before that with DOS and Windows), software doesn’t have to be pretty or original to take first place in the global market. The problem with Apple’s meticulous approach is it’s expensive. The advantage of Google’s iterative kludge is that it’s cheap, or at least makes “cheap” an option. More important than Android for any specific piece of hardware—watches, cars, televisions—was Google’s announcement at I/O of its Android One program to drive development of sub-$100 smartphones for emerging markets. Google says Android already has 1 billion active users. A lower price is probably the best way to get the next billion. If Google can lure that next wave of price-conscious users to Android on phones, it has a better chance of getting them to embrace Android in other hardware, as well.

In the end, any watch released by Apple will still carry a sense of occasion that Android for the wrist doesn’t. That doesn’t mean an Apple smartwatch will necessarily be popular, better, or any more useful. But Apple in the 21st century has yet to create a mobile device with which everyone else hasn’t had to reckon.

Even so, by the time Apple comes out with anything, Android watches will already be on a lot of wrists. Apple may still come to define the smartwatch trend, even if it doesn’t get there first. But history will probably repeat itself: the watch most people look down at won’t have a piece of fruit on the back.